assailment

English

Etymology

assail +‎ -ment

Noun

assailment (countable and uncountable, plural assailments)

1. (now rare) The act of assailing.

   Synonyms: assault, attack

   • 1595, Henoch Clapham, Sommons to Doomes Daie‎^[1], Edinburgh: Robert Waldegrave, pages 41–42:

     Outward conjectures may bee drawne of his [Christ’s] neere approching, […] but the period of time, […] as vncertaine, as is the day, moneth, yeare of the theeues assailment vnto the housholder.

   • 1612, Thomas Shelton, transl., The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-errant, Don-Quixote of the Mancha‎^[2], Part 3, Chapter 13, pp. 269-270:

     I opened it [the letter] not without feare and assailement of my senses, knowing that it must haue beene some serious occasion, which could moue her to write vnto me,

   • 1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 16, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC, page 207:

     Thus, Martin learned in the five minutes’ straggling talk about the stove, that to carry pistols into legislative assemblies, and swords in sticks, and other such peaceful toys; to seize opponents by the throat, as dogs or rats might do; to bluster, bully, and overbear by personal assailment; were glowing deeds.

   • 1887, Marie Corelli, chapter 16, in Thelma,‎^[3], volume 2, London: Richard Bentley, page 40:

     […] seeing her extraordinary beauty, and forestalling the dangers and temptations into which the possession of such exceptional charms might lead her, she adopted a wise preventive course, that cased her as it were in armour, proof against all the assailments of flattery.

   • 2018, Anna Burns, Milkman‎^[4], London: Faber & Faber, Part 3:

     Meanwhile, during all this puzzlement, those unpleasant waves, biological ripple upon nasty ripple, kept up assailment on my legs and backbone.

Further reading

• “assailment”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• Maslenitsa, laminasets